Saturday, August 8, 2009

A new diet sweeping through Hollywood circles relies on eating only one or two colors of food each day depending on the day of the week. Such celebrities as Jennifer Anniston and Gwyneth Paltrow have reportedly maintained their trim figures by adhering to what is being called the "Color Wheel" diet.

Red foods are reserved for Monday, followed by orange on Tuesday, yellow on Wednesday, green on Thursday, blue or purple on Friday, brown or black on Saturday and white on Sunday.

"It's easy to remember and it means my clients don't need to deny themselves anything for longer than six days," said celebrity nutritionist Alexis Chamoff. "It's tastier than macrobiotic or vegan and lets you have more carbs than the Zone or South Beach."

Part of reason that the diet keeps the pounds off, Chamoff added, is that most people can eat only so much orange, carrot and pumpkin in one day before they decide to just stop eating. In addition, the color of the food must be natural and not involve excessive food dyes, thus eliminating most junk foods. The most popular day is Saturday, when steaks, peanut butter and chocolate are permitted as part of brown/black day. One of the more challenging days is Friday, when eggplant, grapes and plums constitute the bulk of blue and purple food consumed.

Celebrity restaurants are catering to their clients by having specials that coincide with the color wheel. Wolfgang Puck's Cut steakhouse, located in Beverly Hills, has always been popular for its Kobe beef. But it is also getting raves for its newly added menu items, like lemon served five ways (sorbet, curd, jam, souffle and candied) and three course pre-fixe "snowscape" of jicama and white asparagus salad, halibut with mashed potatoes and coconut trifle.

Chamoff, who claims credit for the diet, says that a book will be forthcoming with a preface written by Madonna. Kirstie Alley, who previously served as a spokeswoman for Jenny Craig, has expressed interest in taking on a similar role for the Color Wheel.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Famed celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz, whose recent financial troubles have been publicly documented in the media, turned down a lucrative offer to shoot President Bill Clinton's successful visit to North Korea to obtain amnesty for American reporters Euna Lee and Laura Ling.

Although the White House and Clinton's office made clear that the former president was going strictly as a private citizen for humanitarian reasons, Clinton's visit was considered a big coup by North Korean President Kim Jong-Il.

A photo of a staid looking Clnton seated next to Kim surrounded by members of his delegation was quickly distributed around the world. That picture is a far cry from the artistic shots that the North Koreans had proposed to Leibovitz, the acclaimed Vanity Fair photographer responsible for some of the most iconic shots of recent decades.

Perhaps her most famous was a 1981 cover for Rolling Stones magazine of Yoko Ono being kissed by a naked John Lennon. The picture was shot mere hours before his death. She also made waves a decade later with a pregnant, naked Demi Moore Vanity Fair cover, and most recently last year with a shot of teenage sensation Miley Cyrus, who appeared to be naked save for a bedsheet.

The $5 million in cash purportedly offered would have come at precarious financial time for Liebovitz, who is being sued by Art Capital Group. The company lent her $24 million last year and Leibovitz had pledged her properties as well as negatives and rights to her photographs as collateral.

Among the scenes proposed were Kim and Clinton surveying, from the palace balcony, thousands of North Korean soldiers marching in quickstep below. Another was Kim and Clinton -- both golf aficionados -- on the golf course, with Clinton serving as Kim's golf caddy. They had also suggested a shot of Clinton and Kim enjoying Korean barbecue, surrounded by a dizzying display of panchan (little dishes filled with kimchee and other eye-wateringly spicy foodstuffs).

The North Koreans are first class when it comes to propaganda, said a State Department official, but that's with their own people. In their mind, the "Leibovitz treatment" would have upped Kim's glamour quotient with the rest of the world, where they don't have the advantage of controlling all the newspapers and television stations.

When Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes wanted to introduce Suri Cruise to the world they gave Leibovitz exclusive access, letting her shoot at his Telluride, Colorado home. That came after months of less-than-kind tabloid rumors about Suri, which the photos of the black haired baby mostly dispelled. Clinton's visit to North Korea could similarly have served as Kim's coming out party.

Still, even though Leibovitz has shot foreign leaders -- including Queen Elizabeth II -- she was not interested in shooting Kim, even for $5 million, citing a policy against photographing meglomaniacs.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

As polls show a majority of Americans do not believe the claims that President Obama was born in Kenya, Indonesia or Mars and therefore is not an American citizen, the so-called birthers are now conceding that he was born in Hawaii but refuting that Hawaii itself is part of the United States.

"They speak a foreign language there, and it doesn't even make sense," said birther leader Orly Taitz. "Aloha -- it means 'goodbye' and 'hello' or even 'I love you' depending on the tone. That's just like Chinese."

"Just go over there and you can see that most of the people there are Asian," Taitz added.

Though physically apart from the continental United States, Hawaii was admitted into the union on August 21, 1959, nearly two years before Obama's birth on August 4, 1961.

Among the reasons given as proof that Hawaii is not part of the United States was that it was clearly a developing country as evidenced by natives who shimmied up coconut trees and the lack of clothing necessitating grass skirts.

When one journalist tried to point out that the Polynesian Cultural Center was not indicative of how all the residents of Hawaii lived, he was accused of being part of the "liberal elitist conspiracy."